SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Hey everyone, hope you are all good.

I have a nagging question that I cannot find an answer to on the web.

In America; copyright on books is 50 years after the death of the author and in the UK it is 70 years.

I have a book series published in the 1930/1940's by an American author who died in 1965, so Copyright of these books in America expired in 2015.

So my question is: As the author is American; has the copyright expired globally or is it still under copyright in the UK until 2035?

Hoping one of you is a lawyer, lol

Thanks in advance.
Si...

Well I'm not a lawyer,    but if you can find the book title on Gutenberg.org I think you should be in the clear..!!


Project Gutenberg: Free eBooks
https://www.gutenberg.org

The first 2 of 6 books are on Project Gutenberg and the remaining 4 are in Project Gutenberg Canada.

Canada seems to have a 50 year after the authors death too, so I'm still a little confused by it, especially as book 2 and book 3 were published in the same year!

The country you live in is deciding which "law" you have to care for.

If you live in some Eastern Europe country ... you give a dump on US American law ("US copyright").

In Germany you do not have a "copyright", you have a "Urheberrecht" (laws of the creator) and you can only sell an exclusive right to do something - you always stay the "creator".


So with different countries and different laws it means the author of eg a book often needs a legal representative in this country (aka "author pays a lawyer to ... fight for the authors rights"). So if there is no legal agreement between "country where author resided" and "country where you live", then you might be able to do ... as you like. But if there is one - you need to take care for it.

Same then, when you publish stuff - you make it available "world wide" ? then you need to live with the consequences (eg a country who does ignore your countries variant of "copyright" could simply... copy your digital product and make it available in their country for money... or they could simply remove your name from it).
Surely it will be interesting if the consequences lead to problems for yourself (eg you have stuff in it, which is forbidden in that country ...and so on). Or ... if you become aware of people offering your product altered (playing sonic in super mario land). You surely need to fight it almost the same way as you need to protect your "trademarks". And yeah, "trademarks" are ... not existing in all countries. So ripoffs of your brands will happen (if you are sucessful enough of course ).


Back to books: I assume UK and US have a close relationship - both surely signed the Bern convention (agreement about "copyright") or so.
US requires 70 years since death of author ... but 120 years or 95 years when copyright is by a company (hired for creation ...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#:~:text=Copyright%20protection%20generally%20lasts%20for,after%20publication%2C%20whichever%20is%20shorter.


So ... UK and US have the "70 years". Means - come back with your question in ~15 years


bye
Ron

That's cleared up my understanding. Many Thanksgiving